R4 Anomaly Needs a Nerf

[LanceDefender]

I did what I could to reach high expectations and must do dps as I really want to finish this ops for story. But I cannot reach it. I just can't to high enough dps to not being kicked because yes.

Of course it's not that it doesn't work because of me only...

But one wipe is enough to kick me...

So ye, ops should be nerfed on SM for such people as me. I know all tactics on bosses, but cannot do correctly for my role expected numbers. So definitely it need nerd to be pug-able... As a name says Story Mode-for story played.

 

Dominique boss I mean, rest of bosse are quite easy.

[orig_mrrabbit]

So, for an update on my original post . . .

 

I stand by my earlier assessment that no nerf is needed on the first 3 bosses.

 

Why?

 

I was part of two other PUGs for which only 1 or 2 people had previously gotten the OP completed.

 

Last night, I was part of a PUG for which only two of us had gotten it completed - both of us healers.

 

This time the DPS was EXCRUTATINGLY low. Instead of 12k to 16k on first boss, 6k to 9k on first boss. Instead of 19k-34k on second and third bosses, just 9k to 18k.

 

We had dozens of wipes where we had to constantly review mechanics, change roles, and even give DPS priority system and rotational tips to eek out some more DPS out of 'em. At the boss with the panels, I took a panel to free up the DPS there to have more uptime on the boss - and just like that - WIN.

 

One thing that stood out as a sore thumb was something that has become all to obvious the past few months:

 

Too many players in 330 Purple Rakata gear doing only 8k or 9k single target when they should be able to pull 19k+ with just a basic rotation. We have too many players in OPs these past few months who just don't have a basic rotation or priority system awareness that achieves decent DPS.

 

That group last night finished at the third boss quite happy with the progress - we called it at almost 4 hours. They steadily got a better handle on mechanics...and DPS numbers actually increased over time as we trudged on. It was actually a good group personality and attitude wise - no mean stuff - no nasty egos.

 

 

 

My other PUG two nights ago had one person who had actually completed the last boss. The rest of us were there to do just that - get the last boss Lady Dominique down.

 

Here's what I learned:

 

1. Mechanics first, DPS second.

2. Get the mechanics down perfectly - you'll have 8 people standing at burn phase.

3. Have 8 people standing at burn phase - you'll finish with 2-3 people standing.

 

We went at this boss easily 12-13 times. Our DPS plummeted - or appeared to be horrible - but the OPs lead reminded us over and over: "Don't worry about the DPS and downtime guys - this is a pure mechanics fight..."

 

And he was right....

 

Once we put the circles where they needed to be 100% of the time...

Once we adjusted for knockbacks 100% of the time...

Once we made certain boss couldn't see Aria 100% of the time...

Once we made certain the healer stayed up top and away from the Reapers 100% of the time...

 

...we had 8 people standing at 24%. We had 4 people standing at 400k. We had 3 people standing at 0k.

 

Our final DPS was only in the 16k to 28k range - single targeters doing the 16k-17k and dot/aoe guys doing the 25k to 28k.

 

The only person we kicked and replaced - was the 331 person that was only doing 5.8k DPS - less than the tank who was doing 6k to 7k DPS.

 

In my honest opinion:

 

NO NERF NEEDED

 

People just need to follow mechanics - and if they haven't already - take the time to learn how to get at least "above average" DPS out of that 328 to 330 gear. Doesn't have to be 34k on the 1 mill test or 24k off the 3.25 and 6.5 mill test. More like, 24k on the 1 mill, and 20k on the 3.25 mill and 6.5 mill test. Just throwing out some targets with those suggested numbers.

 

That's all...

 

=8-|

[Chryptyk]

 

That group last night finished at the third boss quite happy with the progress - we called it at almost 4 hours. They steadily got a better handle on mechanics...and DPS numbers actually increased over time as we trudged on. It was actually a good group personality and attitude wise - no mean stuff - no nasty egos.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

We went at this boss easily 12-13 times. Our DPS plummeted - or appeared to be horrible - but the OPs lead reminded us over and over: "Don't worry about the DPS and downtime guys - this is a pure mechanics fight..."

 

And he was right....

 

Once we put the circles where they needed to be 100% of the time...

Once we adjusted for knockbacks 100% of the time...

Once we made certain boss couldn't see Aria 100% of the time...

Once we made certain the healer stayed up top and away from the Reapers 100% of the time...

 

 

=8-|

 

Those numbers you listed for the first boss look off to me. How did you keep up with adds and make it through the burn with dps that low? 2nd boss i can buy those. 3rd boss is more clicking and being in the right place.

 

A random pug lasting for 4 hours and only getting through 3rd boss? I've never heard of a random pug lasting that long unless it was organized out of a discord, in which case it's not really a pug.

 

A random pug wiping at least 12 or 13 times on one boss and not falling apart? Again, highly unlikely. But whatever. Expecting a group of average randoms to be able to do everything 100% correctly, that's not likely without a large number of pulls and requiring people to be somewhat competent, which most people do not have the time for.

 

The big take-away here is the scenarios you describe sound more like prog groups than a random pug, go in, do the thing, and get out. TBH, i haven't done a random pug of R4 yet (nor do i want to at this time), but i have seen plenty of groups organized through discords though that were not static teams. these were all more than casual raiders though.

 

i still don't see real casuals making it all the way through. the time investment is something they can't commit to. The skill checks are way above their abilities, without that time to put into it.

[eabevella]

Those numbers you listed for the first boss look off to me. How did you keep up with adds and make it through the burn with dps that low? 2nd boss i can buy those. 3rd boss is more clicking and being in the right place.

 

A random pug lasting for 4 hours and only getting through 3rd boss? I've never heard of a random pug lasting that long unless it was organized out of a discord, in which case it's not really a pug.

 

A random pug wiping at least 12 or 13 times on one boss and not falling apart? Again, highly unlikely. But whatever. Expecting a group of average randoms to be able to do everything 100% correctly, that's not likely without a large number of pulls and requiring people to be somewhat competent, which most people do not have the time for.

 

The big take-away here is the scenarios you describe sound more like prog groups than a random pug, go in, do the thing, and get out. TBH, i haven't done a random pug of R4 yet (nor do i want to at this time), but i have seen plenty of groups organized through discords though that were not static teams. these were all more than casual raiders though.

 

i still don't see real casuals making it all the way through. the time investment is something they can't commit to. The skill checks are way above their abilities, without that time to put into it.

 

This.

 

That group sounded more like a group of experienced raiders happened to bump each other than actual random fleet pug. Most random fleet chat pugs don't spend 4 hour to clear a SM OPs. Most random fleet chat pugs don't stay together after 12-13 wipes. But on the other hand, maybe no one other than experienced raiders (as in someone who runs OPs often and at least clear all previous SM OPs at least once) is forming R4 pug now? So the general skills and patience of the pug members are better.

 

Anyway.

 

It's wrong that a new group have to spend 4 hours to clear 3/4 bosses of a SM OPs.

It's wrong to demand everyone to have 100% success rate on all mechanics to kill a SM boss.

It's wrong to have a tight DPS check plus very unforgiving mechanics in SM OPs.

 

It's called SM for a reason.

R-4 itself is fine and interesting (except the map), I don't want it to be nerfed too bad like how DF has become now, but SM should be: follow key mechanics, don't stand in bad more than 3 secs, don't create/eat more than two big penalties in a row, and you'll be fine.

[ragiista]

Anyway.

 

It's wrong that a new group have to spend 4 hours to clear 3/4 bosses of a SM OPs.

It's wrong to demand everyone to have 100% success rate on all mechanics to kill a SM boss.

It's wrong to have a tight DPS check plus very unforgiving mechanics in SM OPs.

 

I would add to this list: It's wrong to demand a nerf for something that you can't kill but literally 60 - 70% of the pugs who have a bit of an idea whats going on can. This says more about your time investment and interest in the operation, than over the difficulty of this operation. What you do with your time investment, you do you. But don't try to demand that stuff will be easier in this game simply because you don't want to put a bit of effort in this game. That will literally affect everyone meanwhile the solution is easy.

 

We literally killed this in a pug raid with 7 dps and 1 healer, all pugs. People in the group with 10% to 40% operation achievement.

 

I did what I could to reach high expectations and must do dps as I really want to finish this ops for story. But I cannot reach it. I just can't to high enough dps to not being kicked because yes.

Of course it's not that it doesn't work because of me only...

But one wipe is enough to kick me...

So ye, ops should be nerfed on SM for such people as me. I know all tactics on bosses, but cannot do correctly for my role expected numbers. So definitely it need nerd to be pug-able... As a name says Story Mode-for story played.

 

Dominique boss I mean, rest of bosse are quite easy.

 

I feel sorry that you got kicked after 1 wipe, and this shouldn't be happening. Raiding is about having fun, clearing stuff together and meeting new people.

 

However, I don't think this operation should be nerfed for a few reasons, listed here under

 

New Operation

This operation is just a few weeks out. People are still figuring out how to clear this fight. When all the previous operations came out, people were also figuring out how to optimize the operation. Over the years, everyone knows how to do the fight. For example, this results in pug raids doing DF SM in 15 min ish. People know what to expect and how the fight works. If there is someone new in the operation, people explain quick what to do. How are they able to do that? Because they know the operation.

 

Back when gods came out, no one knew the tactics. People who were pugging it on fleet got stuck often at Sisters, the 2nd boss in SM. Why? Because they didn't knew what to do. Do you hear any complaints at the moment from those fights? No, because people kind of know what to do, even though the DPS check is probably even a bit higher with the scaling, pugs are clearing that kind of stuff now with ease.

 

Nowadays in general, most people who get an achievement for something regarding any content [PVE, FP, Uprisings etc.] thinks he/she/it or whatever else there may be out there, knows everything about the fight. Often these people are the people who shout the hardest in a pug run, giving the wrong tactics, which results in groups not killing the content, in this case, the operation.

 

I myself raid so now and then, returned to the game 3 weeks ago. We ran the operation with 7 DPS and 1 Sorc healer. Our DPS wasn't ridiculously high. But we were able to do it because we did the mechanics somewhat properly.

 

Personally, I don't think anyone who is able to do 7k DPS should get the achievement and especially if all the DPS are doing such low numbers. You can literally get 7K by spamming basic attacks nowadays. People who don't invest time in tactics, how to play your class somehow okay, or have no clue what they are talking about shouldn't spoil the fun for others, simply because of their laziness.

 

Invest a bit more time to check your class you playing, and ask other people for help. There are enough people out there who can help you out. If your afraid to ask others, it just takes 5 min time to read something on websites or watch a YT video.

Edited August 17, 2022 by ragiista

[CaptainZiv]

As one who cleared R-4 anomaly on SM on 12th of august as a healer I used a Raid/operation buff during the burn phase and we completed the operation after 4 wipes, now I had to relog to my healer and look for a new DPS now before you say that we defeated Lady Dominique because the DPS of the new player was higher than mine listen to this: we wiped then again after he joined us and I used my buff too late when most of the DPS died, it was my fault of course but on the 5th attempt I used my Raid Buff at the burn phase when all the DPS were still alive and at the end only 2 DPS players died to the monstrosities. and this after this successful night I formed a group again as a DPS and we wiped again, after the group was disbanded I checked the combat logs of the healers on Star pars e and I noticed something they didn't use their Raid buffs even once during the burn phase.... so that's when I realized that the problem was a lack of buffs, so try it tell your healers to use their Raid/operation buffs during the burn phase and you will most likely kill Dominique. Edited August 22, 2022 by CaptainZiv

[ragiista]

You shouldn't need to have mastered your class for any Story Mode Operation however. I have no issues with HM being difficult, but the average Story Mode Operation player simply doesn't do 15k dps most of the time. Not to mention the average story mode raider is so unused to actually having to do mechanics at all, that having a SM operation that is so dependent on them, while having a high dps check at the same time is unrealistic.

 

Groups should not need to have 5 or 6 dps for the checks. Walking into a sm Op with 2 tanks, 2 heals, and 4 dps should still take a relatively minimal dps check for those 4 dps.

 

Story mode Ops have nothing to do with raiding progression anyway, so there really is no reason to have this one so far above the skill level of all of the other sm operations. Leave Veteran Mode as it is, for those that want a real challenge (including myself), but let those sm raiders have it the way they are used to it. (Very easy).

 

I agree with you that it should be doable for everyone. At the same time, I don't think the difficulty of the operation has anything to do with DPS, healing or tank checks, but more with the fact that the operation is new.

 

The fact that people are used that you can do an SM operation without any effort and taking literally every possible dmg from the boss is a big problem in my opinion.

 

Making the operation easier has also another disadvantage, which was a big problem in the last expansions. The skill difference required between an SM and HM operation was quite a lot for some groups. The step between HM and NIM was even bigger, therefore people couldn't do it unless they put some real effort into it, which is fine but demotivating for a lot of groups.

 

By creating an SM operation so easy that you can literally faceroll the operation, you have a big gap between SM and HM again. From there people will start complaining that the gap between the modes is too difficult again.

 

By taking away the difficulty and DPS checks, you create a lot of delusional people who think they can clear everything because SM is so easy, that they start complaining again when HM is too difficult.

 

Therefore following tactics and avoiding taking damage, can help a lot of pug runs with clearing the actual operation instead of nerfing everything again to the ground.

[LanceDefender]

I think I wrote it not 100% clearly.

 

I don't want this ops to become easy as reproduction hehe

But I want this ops doable with random people if needed, without toxicity and being kicked because I'm not doing 20k dps. But in general, it should be chang ether you need to follow the mechanics, but you don't have to be among the best players in game.

Dxun had been in similar situation, they nerfed it, become doable but still not "one shot kill boos" ops. Everyone is happy.

 

I would really like to reach expectations of 20k dps, but I cannot it elseems. Instead I know all mechanics of bosses and so I'm usually among last to die in them or have to stuck.

 

Anything harder? Go to VM and later NIM.

[Chryptyk]

 

Making the operation easier has also another disadvantage, which was a big problem in the last expansions. The skill difference required between an SM and HM operation was quite a lot for some groups. The step between HM and NIM was even bigger, therefore people couldn't do it unless they put some real effort into it, which is fine but demotivating for a lot of groups.

 

By creating an SM operation so easy that you can literally faceroll the operation, you have a big gap between SM and HM again. From there people will start complaining that the gap between the modes is too difficult again.

 

 

The gap between SM and HM is even worse in 7.0 than 6.x, before 7.1. In 6, everyone had equal gear, more or less, so at that point it became desire whether or not they wanted to advance to the next level. In 7.0, the dramatic difference between levels restricted the movement of people moving from one level to the next. There still are some people that were doing HMs before in 6, that still can't do them now. The HP nerf helps some people overcome that gap now and allows some of them to move up to the next level with some reasonable chance of success.

 

People need a reasonable chance of success, or they won't try to move up. Now we have something that is called SM, but is not in any sense of the word as compared to previous operations. You brought up Gods. I cleared that the first day and got a lot of my friends through it in the next couple of weeks or so. I have not had that success with R4. It's great that returning veterans who are good at what they do have had success here, but that same expectation of competency cannot be applied to casual players. I know plenty of them and have been watching them struggle and fail over and over again.

 

So in fairness to those players, they need a SM that is actually SM. Someone more advanced is gonna clear it no matter what, so it doesn't matter to them. They don't even get anything useful from it, so I don't know why the elitists are have such a huge problem with a SM being changed enough for casuals to clear it.

[ragiista]

People need a reasonable chance of success, or they won't try to move up. Now we have something that is called SM, but is not in any sense of the word as compared to previous operations. You brought up Gods. I cleared that the first day and got a lot of my friends through it in the next couple of weeks or so. I have not had that success with R4. It's great that returning veterans who are good at what they do have had success here, but that same expectation of competency cannot be applied to casual players. I know plenty of them and have been watching them struggle and fail over and over again.

 

I think you are right with the fact that everyone needs a reasonable chance of success. However, I fail to see how that isn't the case now. If there is an environment that fleet pugs succeed to kill this boss, over and over again. Of course you always have people who simply cant, but keep in mind that people still fail operations like DP or RAV SM, due to people not reaching dps check, failing mechanics etc, and no one is complaining about that.

 

So in fairness to those players, they need a SM that is actually SM. Someone more advanced is gonna clear it no matter what, so it doesn't matter to them. They don't even get anything useful from it, so I don't know why the elitists are have such a huge problem with a SM being changed enough for casuals to clear it.

 

I disagree with the fact that it doesn't matter for the more advanced players who already killed it. When you kill a difficult boss in an operation or clear it there is a certain feeling of accomplishment, this is for any team in any mode. When you clear an operation once, it doesn't mean you will just oneshot it form now on with a good group of people. Every time when you enter the fight it will be different again and again. There is never 100% guarantee that these people who cleared it already will clear it again the next time.

 

The so called ''elitist'' are in general not active on the forums since they don't care what you guys discuss here. However, they do care about nerfing operations to the ground. People use the term elitist often when someone is calling someone else out on his low numbers, wrong positioning or not having raid awareness. I agree that there are a few people who act like elitist jerks because they think they know everything, but that is a really small % of the player base.

 

Good example with the current NIM operations. BW Nerfed every single operation in NIM because people who cant clear stuff are complaining. Meanwhile, for the raiders who could clear it, it becomes even more easy and boring, and eventually, more and more people leave this game.

Edited August 18, 2022 by ragiista

[orig_mrrabbit]

I am going to double down even further on my opinion that R-4 Anomaly Operation does not need a nerf.

 

This time it was a last boss attempt by a guild with two pugs:

 

Myself as a sorc healer and another sorc healer that I have healed with many times in the past.

 

This guild's tank and dps were nothing short of awesome in terms of:

 

1. Tanking

2. DPS

 

For every attempt, their DPS was consistently:

 

22k to 28k

 

NOT 12k, 13k, 15k, 18k and 19k....

 

Consistently 22k to 28k.

 

Even when they swapped characters, their DPS didn't change. If I could say one thing about this guild - they know how to get awesome DPS out of their 330 and 331 characters.

 

So tanking wasn't issue, dpsing wasn't the issue, nor was heals. 100% solid group all around.

 

Pull after pull we had boss down to under 30% pretty quick. Shortly after it happened...burn phase...

 

What wiped us out everytime?

 

Ads? Nope!

Raidwide knockback? Nope!

Orange circles? Nope!

 

Every single time, it was DPS tunneling the boss so hard - they wouldn't take knockback circles out of the group - and just would not stop DPSing for a second to aim their portion of the knockback arrow beam to make certain they would have a safe landing.

 

Each knockback would take out 2-3 players.

 

After just two rounds of knockbacks - there would be only 1-2 players left standing with boss at 2 or 3% We had the boss down to 400k on one wipe with one player standing.

 

You really just have to follow mechanics on this fight...that's all it really is.

 

Again, as I stated in my original post - it would be nice for the orange circles to be a lot smaller so that SM puggers can have an easier time getting around errant drops. But that's about the only change I recommend for R-4 SM.

 

=8-|

[Toraak]

I am going to double down even further on my opinion that R-4 Anomaly Operation does not need a nerf.

 

This time it was a last boss attempt by a guild with two pugs:

 

Myself as a sorc healer and another sorc healer that I have healed with many times in the past.

 

This guild's tank and dps were nothing short of awesome in terms of:

 

1. Tanking

2. DPS

 

For every attempt, their DPS was consistently:

 

22k to 28k

 

NOT 12k, 13k, 15k, 18k and 19k....

 

Consistently 22k to 28k.

 

Even when they swapped characters, their DPS didn't change. If I could say one thing about this guild - they know how to get awesome DPS out of their 330 and 331 characters.

 

So tanking wasn't issue, dpsing wasn't the issue, nor was heals. 100% solid group all around.

 

Pull after pull we had boss down to under 30% pretty quick. Shortly after it happened...burn phase...

 

What wiped us out everytime?

 

Ads? Nope!

Raidwide knockback? Nope!

Orange circles? Nope!

 

Every single time, it was DPS tunneling the boss so hard - they wouldn't take knockback circles out of the group - and just would not stop DPSing for a second to aim their portion of the knockback arrow beam to make certain they would have a safe landing.

 

Each knockback would take out 2-3 players.

 

After just two rounds of knockbacks - there would be only 1-2 players left standing with boss at 2 or 3% We had the boss down to 400k on one wipe with one player standing.

 

You really just have to follow mechanics on this fight...that's all it really is.

 

Again, as I stated in my original post - it would be nice for the orange circles to be a lot smaller so that SM puggers can have an easier time getting around errant drops. But that's about the only change I recommend for R-4 SM.

 

=8-|

 

This is not common for pug groups however. The fact they had all of the DPS that high in a pug is unlikely, and you said yourself this was a guild group, minus 2 pug players. Meaning they are more likely a progression group that had a couple of people not available that night.

[orig_mrrabbit]

This is not common for pug groups however. The fact they had all of the DPS that high in a pug is unlikely, and you said yourself this was a guild group, minus 2 pug players. Meaning they are more likely a progression group that had a couple of people not available that night.

 

You completely missed the point . . .

 

=8-|

[Toraak]

You completely missed the point . . .

 

=8-|

 

Oh I got it. That group was failing on Mechanics, because they were to busy tunneling the boss.

 

However that isn't an average DPS benchmark for a true Pug.

 

Most Pug groups will never pull those kind of DPS numbers. Most pugs you'll be lucky if each dps is doing 15k-19k on a boss encounter, and you'll still be lucky if they do the proper mechanics at the same time.

[orig_mrrabbit]

Oh I got it. That group was failing on Mechanics, because they were to busy tunneling the boss.

 

However that isn't an average DPS benchmark for a true Pug.

 

Most Pug groups will never pull those kind of DPS numbers. Most pugs you'll be lucky if each dps is doing 15k-19k on a boss encounter, and you'll still be lucky if they do the proper mechanics at the same time.

 

...and it would appear you are very late to the thread....

 

...as I already described the low DPS pug that got it done following mechanics.

 

[Toraak]

...and it would appear you are very late to the thread....

 

...as I already described the low DPS pug that got it done following mechanics.

 

 

yes I saw. You also said they only got the 1st 3 bosses down, so they did not complete the operation.

[Chryptyk]

What you died to is why a group of casuals can't clear this in SM. They can handle one thing or another maybe, but not all of it at once.

[orig_mrrabbit]

yes I saw. You also said they only got the 1st 3 bosses down, so they did not complete the operation.

 

Wrong one...the one where our DPS dropped big time because OPs lead said to stop crying about numbers and stick with mechanics.

 

=8-|

[Aussircaex]

I agree that R-4 Anomaly needs a nerf. I believe my perspective on this might be particularly useful to the community and dev team, which I'll explain below. I apologize for any appearance of arrogance on my part.

 

My raid team is a nightmare raid team, by any objective metric. We've cleared DF, EC, and TFB on nightmare, have cleared all of SnV except for Styrak on nightmare, cleared ToS and Ravager on VM, and cleared Dxun on VM. I imagine this puts us well into the top 10% of active raiding guilds in the game. Our best DPS is competitive with the best DPS who upload to Parsely, and the rest of our DPS pull strong, capable numbers. There are no dead weight members.

 

However, and this is why I believe my perspective is useful here, we are NOT a top 1% guild; the type who was able to test R-4 on the PTS with 340 gear. We do not have a full roster of maximum-optimized alts to pull from to run a meta-team for every boss fight.

 

If I may be presumptuous, we are exactly the sort of team Bioware should be attempting to balance the most difficult content for. We gear our characters carefully, we practice on dummies to get our rotations down, and then we go into operations and work consistently on practice the fight mechanics. It is a reasonable expectation that our group, if anyone, should be able to make progress and kill a new boss every few weeks.

 

However, we haven't been able to get IP-CPT down on Veteran mode. We are also not consistently able to get Dominique down on Story Mode. The tuning is simply too high. And again, we are not failing on mechanics; while we were learning Dominique, we wiped plenty due to that, but now we know the fight well, and cannot consistently kill her, because the tuning is simply too high. Too much damage is dealt by the boss and adds, and the DPS check is simply too high, particularly for a SM operation.

 

In my estimation, there are two related but separate problems to solve here:

 

1. Difficulty expectations are not set properly.

When a group enters an operation on Story Mode, the difficulty is wildly different depending on the operation. Dread Fortress, Scum and Villainy, or Temple of Sacrifice, for example, can be reasonably completed by a random assortment of people gathered from the Fleet in one or two tries per boss at most. This is simply not the case for Nature of Progress or R-4 Anomaly. Even discounting the learning curve of a new operation; even once mechanics are understood, these operations are significantly harder, and that is not signaled to players in any way. The same is true of Veteran mode - ToS and Ravagers are well understood as "Hardmare" because their difficulty is way out of line with other Veteran mode operations, and more comparable to Master mode for some bosses.

 

This disconnect means that, despite R-4 Story Mode being on par with Veteran mode operations in its difficulty, it offers no gear upgrades to a progression team whatsoever - because the tuning is so high that it unreasonable to expect that every member will not be in full 330 gear already.

 

2. Encounters are forcing team composition

It is my belief that an encounter in any MMO raid should be reasonably completable by any assortment of classes (and I don't mean "we took 4 of the current worst DPS"). This is not presently the case with R-4, which not only nearly forces bringing meta-classes (looking at Pyrotech), but has a first boss with a DPS check so high that you have to replace your tanks with DPS? This is not a reasonable balance standard.

 

Bioware, while I cannot presume to know your balances processes, the appearance to this outside observer is that you balance encounter difficulty around whether the absolute best-of-the-best raiders in top-of-the-line gear can barely clear it. This is silly. It should be plainly obvious that Veteran Mode, which you can enter in 330 gear maximum, should be balanced around wearing 330 gear, not 340 gear. And the top 1% of players are, you know, 1%ers. They will never stop complaining that a game is "too easy"; they, by definition, are the ones who find it the "easiest".

[Battouuusi]

I agree that R-4 Anomaly needs a nerf. I believe my perspective on this might be particularly useful to the community and dev team, which I'll explain below. I apologize for any appearance of arrogance on my part.

 

My raid team is a nightmare raid team, by any objective metric. We've cleared DF, EC, and TFB on nightmare, have cleared all of SnV except for Styrak on nightmare, cleared ToS and Ravager on VM, and cleared Dxun on VM. I imagine this puts us well into the top 10% of active raiding guilds in the game. Our best DPS is competitive with the best DPS who upload to Parsely, and the rest of our DPS pull strong, capable numbers. There are no dead weight members.

 

However, and this is why I believe my perspective is useful here, we are NOT a top 1% guild; the type who was able to test R-4 on the PTS with 340 gear. We do not have a full roster of maximum-optimized alts to pull from to run a meta-team for every boss fight.

 

If I may be presumptuous, we are exactly the sort of team Bioware should be attempting to balance the most difficult content for. We gear our characters carefully, we practice on dummies to get our rotations down, and then we go into operations and work consistently on practice the fight mechanics. It is a reasonable expectation that our group, if anyone, should be able to make progress and kill a new boss every few weeks.

 

However, we haven't been able to get IP-CPT down on Veteran mode. We are also not consistently able to get Dominique down on Story Mode. The tuning is simply too high. And again, we are not failing on mechanics; while we were learning Dominique, we wiped plenty due to that, but now we know the fight well, and cannot consistently kill her, because the tuning is simply too high. Too much damage is dealt by the boss and adds, and the DPS check is simply too high, particularly for a SM operation.

 

In my estimation, there are two related but separate problems to solve here:

 

1. Difficulty expectations are not set properly.

When a group enters an operation on Story Mode, the difficulty is wildly different depending on the operation. Dread Fortress, Scum and Villainy, or Temple of Sacrifice, for example, can be reasonably completed by a random assortment of people gathered from the Fleet in one or two tries per boss at most. This is simply not the case for Nature of Progress or R-4 Anomaly. Even discounting the learning curve of a new operation; even once mechanics are understood, these operations are significantly harder, and that is not signaled to players in any way. The same is true of Veteran mode - ToS and Ravagers are well understood as "Hardmare" because their difficulty is way out of line with other Veteran mode operations, and more comparable to Master mode for some bosses.

 

This disconnect means that, despite R-4 Story Mode being on par with Veteran mode operations in its difficulty, it offers no gear upgrades to a progression team whatsoever - because the tuning is so high that it unreasonable to expect that every member will not be in full 330 gear already.

 

2. Encounters are forcing team composition

It is my belief that an encounter in any MMO raid should be reasonably completable by any assortment of classes (and I don't mean "we took 4 of the current worst DPS"). This is not presently the case with R-4, which not only nearly forces bringing meta-classes (looking at Pyrotech), but has a first boss with a DPS check so high that you have to replace your tanks with DPS? This is not a reasonable balance standard.

 

Bioware, while I cannot presume to know your balances processes, the appearance to this outside observer is that you balance encounter difficulty around whether the absolute best-of-the-best raiders in top-of-the-line gear can barely clear it. This is silly. It should be plainly obvious that Veteran Mode, which you can enter in 330 gear maximum, should be balanced around wearing 330 gear, not 340 gear. And the top 1% of players are, you know, 1%ers. They will never stop complaining that a game is "too easy"; they, by definition, are the ones who find it the "easiest".

 

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100% Agreed. Well put.

[Chryptyk]

I agree that R-4 Anomaly needs a nerf. I believe my perspective on this might be particularly useful to the community and dev team, which I'll explain below. I apologize for any appearance of arrogance on my part.

 

My raid team is a nightmare raid team, by any objective metric. We've cleared DF, EC, and TFB on nightmare, have cleared all of SnV except for Styrak on nightmare, cleared ToS and Ravager on VM, and cleared Dxun on VM. I imagine this puts us well into the top 10% of active raiding guilds in the game. Our best DPS is competitive with the best DPS who upload to Parsely, and the rest of our DPS pull strong, capable numbers. There are no dead weight members.

 

However, and this is why I believe my perspective is useful here, we are NOT a top 1% guild; the type who was able to test R-4 on the PTS with 340 gear. We do not have a full roster of maximum-optimized alts to pull from to run a meta-team for every boss fight.

 

If I may be presumptuous, we are exactly the sort of team Bioware should be attempting to balance the most difficult content for. We gear our characters carefully, we practice on dummies to get our rotations down, and then we go into operations and work consistently on practice the fight mechanics. It is a reasonable expectation that our group, if anyone, should be able to make progress and kill a new boss every few weeks.

 

However, we haven't been able to get IP-CPT down on Veteran mode. We are also not consistently able to get Dominique down on Story Mode. The tuning is simply too high. And again, we are not failing on mechanics; while we were learning Dominique, we wiped plenty due to that, but now we know the fight well, and cannot consistently kill her, because the tuning is simply too high. Too much damage is dealt by the boss and adds, and the DPS check is simply too high, particularly for a SM operation.

 

In my estimation, there are two related but separate problems to solve here:

 

1. Difficulty expectations are not set properly.

When a group enters an operation on Story Mode, the difficulty is wildly different depending on the operation. Dread Fortress, Scum and Villainy, or Temple of Sacrifice, for example, can be reasonably completed by a random assortment of people gathered from the Fleet in one or two tries per boss at most. This is simply not the case for Nature of Progress or R-4 Anomaly. Even discounting the learning curve of a new operation; even once mechanics are understood, these operations are significantly harder, and that is not signaled to players in any way. The same is true of Veteran mode - ToS and Ravagers are well understood as "Hardmare" because their difficulty is way out of line with other Veteran mode operations, and more comparable to Master mode for some bosses.

 

This disconnect means that, despite R-4 Story Mode being on par with Veteran mode operations in its difficulty, it offers no gear upgrades to a progression team whatsoever - because the tuning is so high that it unreasonable to expect that every member will not be in full 330 gear already.

 

2. Encounters are forcing team composition

It is my belief that an encounter in any MMO raid should be reasonably completable by any assortment of classes (and I don't mean "we took 4 of the current worst DPS"). This is not presently the case with R-4, which not only nearly forces bringing meta-classes (looking at Pyrotech), but has a first boss with a DPS check so high that you have to replace your tanks with DPS? This is not a reasonable balance standard.

 

Bioware, while I cannot presume to know your balances processes, the appearance to this outside observer is that you balance encounter difficulty around whether the absolute best-of-the-best raiders in top-of-the-line gear can barely clear it. This is silly. It should be plainly obvious that Veteran Mode, which you can enter in 330 gear maximum, should be balanced around wearing 330 gear, not 340 gear. And the top 1% of players are, you know, 1%ers. They will never stop complaining that a game is "too easy"; they, by definition, are the ones who find it the "easiest".

 

Amazing post buddy. I know a lot of people in your shoes. If they're not gonna change SM, then it needs to give better gear to help people with HM.

[Elvarania]

I echo a lot of the sentiment in this thread. I am also in a MM raiding team, and have cleared all legacy MMs except Dxun and Gods. I agree that R-4 needs dire and quick attention.

The first boss is absurdly over-tuned, and requires 6 DPS pulling over 20k to meet the enrage timer (sounds low but DPS have to do 20k whilst dodging all the mechanics), or 5 DPS pulling 28k with 3 healers.

What is perhaps more shocking, though, is the 2nd and 3rd bosses are a walk in the park compared to the first. There is hardly any progression needed. Why is the first boss of the new raid so difficult?

 

The worst thing, however, is the loot design philosophy. R-4 is the only way to get 330+ gear, and only two tokens drop per boss. Thus, R-4 in its current state has done several things:

 

1) limited 330+ gear to perhaps 1% of the playerbase able to clear this operation on veteran, alienating the vast majority of SWtOR players

2) frustrate raid teams to, at best, no enjoyment, or at worst, either disbanding or buying lockouts for 2nd boss at insane inflation prices

3) creating a process where raid leaders are asking people to give collectively earned tokens to healers first so they can handle the first boss, which causes contention in raid teams

 

I am not suggesting the raid be nerfed into the ground. We don't want free gear. We want a challenge. What we don't want is stupidly over-tuned bosses whilst also contending with a myriad bugs (players appearing dead, doors not opening and requiring a raid reset). The new mechanics are great and each boss feels different, but the operation is just not fit for purpose at the moment.

How the devs thought this is progressive gearing or a good idea is beyond me. It's totally crazy. The first boss definitely needs a nerf, dare I say it the 2nd and 3rd might need a buff, IF the intention is to only obtain 330+ from this operation.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Elvarania

[Boss_Golem]

I echo a lot of the sentiment in this thread. I am also in a MM raiding team, and have cleared all legacy MMs except Dxun and Gods. I agree that R-4 needs dire and quick attention.

The first boss is absurdly over-tuned, and requires 6 DPS pulling over 20k to meet the enrage timer (sounds low but DPS have to do 20k whilst dodging all the mechanics), or 5 DPS pulling 28k with 3 healers.

 

DPS check is not that crazy. My Team cleared it with (22k/21k/18k/17k/15.7k/14k) overall DPS. And 20k dps during burn is completely fine and doable for an HM raid. The real check are the 2 droids phases.

[WoRei]

DPS check is not that crazy. My Team cleared it with (22k/21k/18k/17k/15.7k/14k) overall DPS. And 20k dps during burn is completely fine and doable for an HM raid. The real check are the 2 droids phases.

 

Well, for sure it is crazy if you have to bring 6 (!!) DPS players.

What's next? No, the DPS check is cool, we just brought 8 PTs, was easy.

[WoRei]

I agree that R-4 Anomaly needs a nerf. I believe my perspective on this might be particularly useful to the community and dev team, which I'll explain below. I apologize for any appearance of arrogance on my part.

 

My raid team is a nightmare raid team, by any objective metric. We've cleared DF, EC, and TFB on nightmare, have cleared all of SnV except for Styrak on nightmare, cleared ToS and Ravager on VM, and cleared Dxun on VM. I imagine this puts us well into the top 10% of active raiding guilds in the game. Our best DPS is competitive with the best DPS who upload to Parsely, and the rest of our DPS pull strong, capable numbers. There are no dead weight members.

 

However, and this is why I believe my perspective is useful here, we are NOT a top 1% guild; the type who was able to test R-4 on the PTS with 340 gear. We do not have a full roster of maximum-optimized alts to pull from to run a meta-team for every boss fight.

 

If I may be presumptuous, we are exactly the sort of team Bioware should be attempting to balance the most difficult content for. We gear our characters carefully, we practice on dummies to get our rotations down, and then we go into operations and work consistently on practice the fight mechanics. It is a reasonable expectation that our group, if anyone, should be able to make progress and kill a new boss every few weeks.

 

However, we haven't been able to get IP-CPT down on Veteran mode. We are also not consistently able to get Dominique down on Story Mode. The tuning is simply too high. And again, we are not failing on mechanics; while we were learning Dominique, we wiped plenty due to that, but now we know the fight well, and cannot consistently kill her, because the tuning is simply too high. Too much damage is dealt by the boss and adds, and the DPS check is simply too high, particularly for a SM operation.

 

In my estimation, there are two related but separate problems to solve here:

 

1. Difficulty expectations are not set properly.

When a group enters an operation on Story Mode, the difficulty is wildly different depending on the operation. Dread Fortress, Scum and Villainy, or Temple of Sacrifice, for example, can be reasonably completed by a random assortment of people gathered from the Fleet in one or two tries per boss at most. This is simply not the case for Nature of Progress or R-4 Anomaly. Even discounting the learning curve of a new operation; even once mechanics are understood, these operations are significantly harder, and that is not signaled to players in any way. The same is true of Veteran mode - ToS and Ravagers are well understood as "Hardmare" because their difficulty is way out of line with other Veteran mode operations, and more comparable to Master mode for some bosses.

 

This disconnect means that, despite R-4 Story Mode being on par with Veteran mode operations in its difficulty, it offers no gear upgrades to a progression team whatsoever - because the tuning is so high that it unreasonable to expect that every member will not be in full 330 gear already.

 

2. Encounters are forcing team composition

It is my belief that an encounter in any MMO raid should be reasonably completable by any assortment of classes (and I don't mean "we took 4 of the current worst DPS"). This is not presently the case with R-4, which not only nearly forces bringing meta-classes (looking at Pyrotech), but has a first boss with a DPS check so high that you have to replace your tanks with DPS? This is not a reasonable balance standard.

 

Bioware, while I cannot presume to know your balances processes, the appearance to this outside observer is that you balance encounter difficulty around whether the absolute best-of-the-best raiders in top-of-the-line gear can barely clear it. This is silly. It should be plainly obvious that Veteran Mode, which you can enter in 330 gear maximum, should be balanced around wearing 330 gear, not 340 gear. And the top 1% of players are, you know, 1%ers. They will never stop complaining that a game is "too easy"; they, by definition, are the ones who find it the "easiest".

 

Thanks for your contribution - the perspective of objective nim-raiders is far more valuable than that of those elitist players who always claim everything is super easy (although I'm not even sure if these players aren't just trolling).